For quite some time every commercial flight I boarded in the U.S. made an announcement about Samsung Galaxy Note 7s catching on fire. You couldn’t bring one onboard. If you were living under a rock and still using a Note 7 darn it you’d learn about the risks if you tried to board a commercial flight.

I carry a Samsung Galaxy S7 phone. Less technically inclined folks would ask me, “isn’t that the one that catches fire?” No, no it isn’t.

Jet Airways, while not commenting on inoperative fire extinguishers, says their “crew immediately took charge of the situation…as per the prescribed guidelines” and Samsung says they’re “in touch with relevant authorities for more information.”

It’s a good thing this happened in the passenger cabin, and that the US government didn’t force all world airlines to put electronics in checked luggage.

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Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

Cell phones, tablets, notebooks, and their batteries have been a known issue since the days of Dell notebook batteries spontaneously combusting 10 years ago. It is past time to develop a way to safely transport this fire hazard on an airplane. I don’t even know how effective a fire extinguisher is on these batteries since these are out of control chemical reactions. I guess the water short circuited the phone, thereby cutting off the power to the battery and extinguishing the fire. I know my phone can get hot while charging, or if location tracking and/or Wi-Fi is on while in motion. I don’t think this happens to Apple phones as much, but with Androids, I see it more and more.
The problem now is that we have all of these portable external batteries and cell phones and tablets. And, we have an FAA and NTSB without a clue as to what to do for an in-flight fire of this nature. If they do have a clue, have they shared it with airlines?
Somebody better come up with some solutions before we get a knee-jerk FAA reaction banning all electronics on flights and we are stuck with on board inflight entertainment systems and reruns of the Andy Griffith show.

While I appreciate the article you might want to work on the “dramatic factor”. Once again, you need to talk to the experts than “everyone on board said”. The fire extinguisher will only work for a brief bit with these types of fires. If you want drama, what the fas did was a good thing. Look up Thermal runaway. That’s what happens to these batteries. All you can do is best to keep it cool from reaching that point! A few airlines have added battery fire bags to their airplanes for this type of emergency. I know alaska airlines did! https://blog.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/news/fire-containment/

I have a business where we have dozens of fire extinguishers and quite often have to use them. It’s not uncommon for even well maintained fire extinguishers to fail. Never rely on your fire extinguishers to actually work. Glad they were able to control the situation.

It’s hard to comment on the efficacy of the fire system without knowing how much smoke was actually present, they are calibrated to a certain degree to avoid nuisance tripping, so smoke in the air has to reach a particular set point before the fire system is activated.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.

Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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